Smoke and Lotus Petals
by Orangepiesandcream
Summary: The sandaime mizukage's kisses taste of lotus flowers and smoke. That was the first indication that somewhere, his life had gone comically, tragically wrong. On MadaOro and the choices we make in life.


Disclaimer: None of the characters or places mentioned in the following are my intellectual property. Naruto is copyright of Masashi Kishimoto and whomever else.

The sandaime mizukage's kisses tasted of lotus flowers and smoke. That was the first indication that somewhere, his life had gone comically, tragically wrong.

* * *

This is how his life goes: When he his born, he is abandoned.

When he is five, he is found. Adopted only by grace or condemnation of the orphanage's head and an in hindsight ridiculous bout of cross dressing. Of course, the joy of adoption soon paled in face of his new parents' badly hidden disappointment of not having adopted a small, sweet little girl who was all smiles and lace, but a rather sullen faced young boy with feminine hair and features, all points and sharp bones jutting out awkwardly at the edges.  
When he is twelve, he is abandoned once again, but that is ok, because his heart has already started to harden, and his soul to slip from his grasp. Sometimes, he remembers the soft, startled laugh of his mother or the booming, kindly authoritative voice of his father. It is only when he dreams half-forgotten memories of lazy summer days and the squishyness of a young girls hand in his; sticky kisses and messy childish braids in his long dark hair; that he wakes up screaming, covered in disgusting, cold sweat.  
When he is twelve he is adopted once again, and finds a niche of his own, an n-dimensional hypervolume within which he could maintain a viable existence, inside Team 7's frail makeshift family.  
When he is twenty-nine he will understand the pattern of his life and betray them, before they could inevitably, indubitably do the same to him.

* * *

He doesn't know what he is searching for, in the long nights spent in the laboratory. Certainly not the answers to the orders he is given, mere childsplay compared to what he could do if given the proper, available resources. One night a dark-haired phantom appears in the doorway, adjusts it's orange mask and holds out a hand. He doesn't take it but he stares into the figure's black, soulless eye and that is almost worse. He does not question, just quietly accepts it when his best friends who are so much more return from battle, exhausted, half-dead and with a glimmer of mistrust in their eyes. That is when things begin to change.

* * *

On the third day of the peace negotiations with Kiri he has had enough. The others may be fooled by soft, lilting tones belying a cardinal brutality, by charismatic smiles and phrases casually dispersed throughout a conversation as if they would be things of little or no value. Which they are; to him. He is not fooled. He has seen the face behind the mask, both the literal and the figurative and decides it is time to take this affair into his hands.  
The other mans rough palms rest lightly on his arms he is using to keep his interlocutor pinned harshly to the alley's brick wall, serving only to infuriate him further. The blue trimmed hat of office which the masked man wears so mockingly slips, adn falls to shade both of their faces. The other man laughs a short, barking laugh which grates on his ears and forces him into action.

It is only much later, when he will walk away, never to return to this place once so full of warmth, that he will realise that it was that one soft kiss that sold his soul.

* * *

Distractions from the harsh reality of their time are few and in between. Once a lost, floaty feeling as he loses himself in the black eyed man's distant gaze, a remembrance of a past, equally violent and traitorous time. A short, hysterical laugh at a friends gratuitous, polite expense. The curl of both a male and a female set of fingers around his wrist , carefully avoiding the tube feeding morphine into his bloodstream, reminding him that he has not lost it all. Yet.

* * *

Sexual activity was never quite the same. The satisfaction of womanly curves, of thick wavy blond hair wrapped around his hand and the soft wet folds of a woman's body wrapped around him never managed to compare to battle worn finger pads, course, straw-like black hair or the masculine curve of another's back under his fingers.

Neither, he realised with dismay, would a different set of rough hands, straw-like hair of a distinctly lighter shade or the equally masculine curve of a different, more muscular man's back.

* * *

He once made the mistake, drunk off victory, power and expensive wine, of bringing the older man into his apartment. He woke up alone the next morning, tired, sore and unwell; physically unmarked save for a tiny, aggressive love bite in the hollow of his neck, like some sort of demented literary foreshadowing. The tea cup shattered in his hand and for a few moments it was all he could do not to sink to his knees and cry.

* * *

It was anyones guess as to why the other man consistently found him in these situations, sprawled on his knees in a forest clearing covered in someone else's blood and laughing hysterically because he had just doubled the body count of the whole entire war and had absolutely no fucking idea what else he was supposed to be doing. Low EQ and all that.  
By the time he came to enough to be referred to as anything vaguely resembling lucid he was propped up on a hospital bed, clean of blood almost to the point of sterilisation and unable to recall anything in between save for a mad pair of spinning irises and a chuckled appraisal.

'You'll do. You'll do rather nicely,' were the words that would haunt him in his half-formed nightmares and restless sleep.

* * *

These are the thoughts running through his head as he gently, almost reverently sets the unconscious body of his teammate down on the war ravaged soil of Konoha. He is twenty-nine and brash and young; and he decides that that is not the direction he choses for himself. So he stays and is only mildly hurt by the look of utter bafflement he receives when Jiraiya wakes up to a fire merrily burning away at what was once a familiar black cloak with clouds that symbolised freedom on it, and his wounds freshly bandaged.

He recovers well, of course, and for several hours they just sit there by the fire, one grinning like a lunatic and the other more content than he remembered being in his lifetime.


End file.
